Thomas Mayer, author, meditation teacher and civil rights activist, was born in southern Germany. He is co-founder of More Democracy, an association in Germany to further direct democracy or participatory politics, particularly through referenda (of which he has organized many). He has lectured widely on the subject of regional currencies and initiated pilot projects to introduce them.

He organized a referendum in Switzerland in 2018 called sovereign money regarding the question of who should have the right to create money: private banks or public institutions? Since 2004 he has been teaching anthroposophical meditation, together with Agnes Hardorp. He is the author of eleven books, including Answering the Call of the Elementals (2021).